Suffice it to say, I’ve had a tough two weeks. The tough two weeks have had almost everything to do with my computer problems.

A couple of weeks ago I talked about my first issue and how I eventually had to solve it via a Windows 10 reset. It worked well in getting my computer back into working order, but it killed a lot of things I wasn’t expecting would happen and gave me both mental and physical agida until I finally got everything back to order.

Thinking I’d solved my issue and then created another system restore point, I thought I was humming along pretty well. Until… I wasn’t. To skip ahead in this post just a little bit let me share this via the video I did about it:

If you didn’t watch the video know that in the long run I lost my hard drive because of a Windows 10 update that blew away the partition that not only held the Windows operating system but all the drivers so the hard drive would work with the computer. That moves us into the next phase of this story, talking about administrator accounts.

When I wrote the post about the Windows 10 reset, I didn’t mention a specific thing because I’d been having problems with it before I had to do the reset. A different Win 10 update had taken away my ability to rip files from CDs to the computer so I could listen to them later on in my smartphone in the car. I tend to listen to recorded books that I take out from the library instead of music most of the time; it helps keep my interest and my mind alert while I’m going about my mobile business.

That was irksome, and all the research I was doing wasn’t helping me figure out what the problem was. I was really frustrated until I wondered… would it work if I was in administrator mode. I’m not sure why I thought about that but figured it wouldn’t hurt.

The problem for most of you is that, in Windows 10, the administrative mode is hidden, just like a lot of other stuff on your computer. Even though the Microsoft people are correct in assuming that most people wouldn’t know what to do with all those hidden files in the first place, I think it’s criminal that the Win 10 version automatically hides the admin account. Thus, if I’m going to tell my tale about going there so that it might help some of you later on, I have to tell you how to make your admin account visible.

It’s a pretty simple process, whether or not you’re a pro. The first thing you do is click on the Windows button, then type “cmd” without the quotation marks and hit enter. It’ll take you to the C:/ prompt that some of you might remember from past operating systems that you’ll rarely have to go into in Windows 10. If you’ve never been here before… welcome to computing 101! 🙂

Once you get the prompt, type this: net user administrator /active:yes and hit enter. If it works (and why wouldn’t it), you’ll get this message: The command completed successfully. If it didn’t, make sure you typed it in properly and try it again. The safest thing to do is copy what I’ve shared above and paste it in to make sure you got it correct.

Once you have that, the next step is to hit the Windows button again to open the menu. On the left, 4 or 5 images above your taskbar, you’ll see a circle with a head in it. Click on that and you’ll not only see your normal login name but you’ll see the administrator account. Click on that and it’ll boot up that account.

Once you do that, you’ll only see programs that Microsoft has added to your computer on your desktop… and possibly some that your computer added when you bought the thing. One of the things you’ll see is Windows Media Player. I opened that up, and suffice it to say that it didn’t have all the music files that I have on my computer. Luckily, I was only interested in seeing if it would burn files from a CD; and it worked perfectly.

I tell that tale to tell this next one. I wanted to record the video I posted above, and I didn’t want to do it on my smartphone. Right now I’m using the laptop for all my computing so I took my camera off my main monitor and hooked it to the laptop… and nothing happened.

For whatever reason, Windows 10 on the laptop decided to disable my camera in normal mode; sigh… Remembering the lesson from trying to burn files on my main computer, I had to open the hidden administrator account on my laptop, then I signed into it. In this case the program wasn’t on my desktop but it was in File Explorer where it was supposed to be. I opened the program and it was working perfectly; whew!

The main lesson here is that if you have programs that suddenly aren’t working normally like you’re used to, check them out in administrator mode to see if they’ll work over there. One of these days I’ll probably do some research to figure out how to get things working on my main account but for now I’m all researched out!

If any of you have had issues with a Windows 10 update, even the one I mentioned, please share what you’re trying to do about it. If the administrative account works for something other than what I’ve mentioned, share that as well. Good luck!